Virtual machine migration tool

ABSTRACT

Tools and techniques for migrating applications to compute clouds are described herein. A tool may be used to migrate any arbitrary application to a specific implementation of a compute cloud. The tool may use a library of migration rules, apply the rules to a selected application, and in the process generate migration output. The migration output may be advisory information, revised code, patches, or the like. There may be different sets of rules for different cloud compute platforms, allowing the application to be migrated to different clouds. The rules may describe a wide range of application features and corresponding corrective actions for migrating the application. Rules may specify semantic behavior of the application, code or calls, storage, database instances, interactions with databases, operating systems hosting the application, and others.

BACKGROUND

Recently there has been an increase in the use and availability of compute clouds, sometimes referred to as Platform as a Service (PaaS). Examples of compute clouds are Windows Azure™, Amazon EC2™, Bungee Connect™, Google App Engine™, and others. These compute clouds typically host many tenants, each running their own isolated web applications or web services that are typically accessed by client browsers. The tenant's applications often run in virtual machines (VMs). The compute cloud provides an execution environment that may handle changing conditions and demands in ways that are intended to be transparent to the applications. For example, balancing the load of incoming requests, provisioning network bandwidth, processing resources, storage, scaling applications (e.g., adjusting the number of instances), relocating virtual machines and application instances, etc. Shared computing clouds are managed by an operator entity, allowing tenants to be concerned primarily with their applications.

However, a computing cloud, as an execution environment, may have traits, including both benefits and limitations, that are inconsistent with applications not originally designed to run on the computing cloud. For example, consider a three-tier web application originally designed to run on particular operating systems using specific non-cloud resources (e.g., relational databases) and perhaps various software and hardware facilities. The application may have a web front-end with built-in logic for handling fluctuations in load. The front-end may interface with a middle-tier that implements business logic and interacts with local file storage and back-end storage such as a database. This application may have semantics for self-scaling that are not necessary in a cloud. The application may have its own database layer and accompanying management software that is not needed in the cloud. The application may have operating system configuration settings that conflict with control by the cloud (some clouds may not even require an operating system). Aspects of the application might need to be altered, removed, or added to allow the application to efficiently execute in a computing cloud.

Techniques discussed below relate to tools for migrating applications and virtual machines to computing clouds.

SUMMARY

The following summary is included only to introduce some concepts discussed in the Detailed Description below. This summary is not comprehensive and is not intended to delineate the scope of the claimed subject matter, which is set forth by the claims presented at the end.

FIG. 1 shows a generic computing cloud.

FIG. 2 shows another view of generic computing cloud.

FIG. 3 shows two example computing cloud architectures.

FIG. 4 shows another computing cloud architecture.

FIG. 5 shows an example migration of a target application to a computing cloud.

FIG. 6 shows a migration tool.

FIG. 7 shows a view of the rules or migration library.

FIG. 8 shows a process performed by migration tool.

FIG. 9 shows an example set of reading tools used by the migration tool.

Many of the attendant features will be explained below with reference to the following detailed description considered in connection with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present description will be better understood from the following detailed description read in light of the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals are used to designate like parts in the accompanying description.

Tools and techniques for migrating applications to compute clouds are described herein. A tool may be used to migrate any arbitrary application to a specific implementation of a compute cloud. The tool may use a library of migration rules, apply the rules to a selected application, and in the process generate migration output. The migration output may be advisory information, revised code, patches, or the like. There may be different sets of rules for different cloud compute platforms, allowing the application to be migrated to different clouds. The rules may describe a wide range of application features and corresponding corrective actions for migrating the application. Rules may specify semantic behavior of the application, code or calls, storage, database instances, interactions with databases, operating systems hosting the application, and others.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Overview

Embodiments discussed below relate to migrating tools for migrating applications to computing clouds. Discussion will begin with explanation of computing clouds, followed by several examples. An example application will be discussed. Tools and techniques for migrating will be described next, including migration tools, migration rules, and processes for migration.

Computing Clouds

FIG. 1 shows a generic computing cloud 100. A data network 102 provides connectivity between various computers (not shown) that make up the computing cloud 100. Generally, a large number of computers host virtual machines that host isolated tenant applications. Various cloud services 104 may provide functions such as a communication queue, load balancing, etc. A cloud platform 106 may act as the interface for tenants through which they may upload and manage their applications. The cloud platform 106 may also wrap and manage applications of tenants, in effect providing a compute environment for each application. Cloud infrastructure 108 may include billing and management elements. For instance, the cloud infrastructure 108 may bring computers online and offline to handle changes in load of applications and/or the computing cloud 100. Cloud storage 110 may take various forms, for instance a relational database service that provides instances of databases controlled and configured by respective tenants, simple blob (binary large object) storage, table storage, file system storage, etc.

FIG. 2 shows another view of generic computing cloud 100. In this view, tenants 120, 122 have respective cloud-hosted applications 124, 126. The computing cloud 100 has a fabric 125 that manages compute environments 128, 130 for the applications 124, 126. The fabric 125 may have many computers running VMs with guest operating systems, storage services, etc. The applications 124, 126 may comprise various components typical for web-based access and may use resources provided by the computing cloud 100. The compute environments 128, 130 may be analogous to Amazon EC2 instances (as configured by Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)), roles (as in Microsoft Azure), sandboxed simulated partial operating systems with managed code environments (as in Google App Engine), etc. The compute environments 128, 130 may be “expanded” by the fabric 125 according to current conditions such as load, network traffic, unexpected failures, and so on. Such expansion may involve transparently adding or removing computation resources (hardware, VMs, service instances, database instances, etc.) according to need.

The applications 124, 126 are uploaded and configured by the tenants 120, 122. The applications 124, 126 run as managed by the computing cloud 100, and clients 128 access instances of the applications 124, 126 using browsers or other types of client software. Note that from the application perspective, the application is running on a platform and activity of the computing cloud 100 is mostly transparent. The applications are accessed via communications protocols without any concern for the underlying hardware, data network, or the cloud layer between the application and the client.

FIG. 3 shows two example computing cloud architectures. Cloud architecture 250 is a version of the Amazon EC2 cloud. Application development and deployment is handled by the tenant client. The cloud provides cloud computing services in the form of machine images and on-demand instances. Applications are hosted in guest operating systems in virtual machines. Instances of virtual machines and databases are provided by the cloud as needed from support services. A queue service may facilitate communication between virtual machines and application instances. Details of how these components work and cooperate are available elsewhere.

Cloud architecture 252 is a version of the Google App Engine cloud. Various development tools are used to build and deploy an application. The App Engine itself is fully documented elsewhere. A key feature is that once an application is deployed, the App Engine automatically handles scaling; resources and/or instances are added and removed as needed. Various support services may be accessed by applications. Account services, data table services, and others, are used by the applications, and these resources are also scaled and managed by the cloud.

FIG. 4 shows a computing cloud architecture 254 for a version of Microsoft Azure. Roles are provided, which are discrete scalable components built with managed code. Worker roles are for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. Web roles provide a web server and listen and respond for web requests via an HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) or HTTPS (HTTP secure) endpoint. VM roles are instantiated according to tenant defined configurations (e.g., resources, guest operating system). Operating system and VM updates are managed by the cloud. A web role and a worker role run in a VM role, which is a virtual machine under the control of the tenant. Storage and SQL services are available to be used by the roles. As with other clouds, the hardware and software environment or platform, including scaling, load balancing, etc., are handled by the cloud.

To summarize, in PaaS-type computing clouds, the cloud computing platform itself handles most administrative functions. The platform may automatically (and transparently to tenants) handle things such as applying operating system patches, installing new versions of system or database software, onlining computers and VMs, migrating VMs, allocating network bandwidth, and so on. This transparent management, which might intersect with some semantic behavior of applications (discussed in the next section), nonetheless can eliminate application unavailability due to patching, hardware failures, overload, and other reasons. Moreover the cloud, which is in control of the physical and virtual machines, handles application scaling; the cloud assures that appropriate levels of resources are available at any given time. Computing cloud platforms may have other features. For example, browser-based development tools, seamless deployment to a hosted runtime environment in the cloud (i.e., the ability to deploy and start an application from a client accessing the cloud), web-based management and monitoring tools for tenants, pay-as-you-go billing, and others.

Application Migration

As suggested above, an application not originally built to run in a computing cloud can have design traits (semantics), code properties, and configuration features that may be affected by a computing cloud's architecture and services. An application may have functionality such as load balancing and scaling that is redundant in a cloud environment. An application might also have features that in a cloud environment can lead to errors, data loss, or other failures. When migrating an application to a cloud environment, there are often modifications that can or should be made for compatibility, reliability, efficiency, minimizing cost, proper installation, and so on.

FIG. 5 shows an example migration of a target application 280 to a computing cloud. The target application 280 is a machine or host-based application originally designed for a specific operating system and custom infrastructure, for example, an in-house information technology (IT) environment. The target application 280 has a three-tier architecture, including a front-end of web servers 282 that handle client requests. A custom-built load balancer 284 distributes client requests among the web servers 282. A middle tier includes application servers 286 that handle the logic and main functionality of the target application 280. The middle tier stores data and application state in a database managed by an SQL server 288. The SQL server maintains a database mirror for fail-over and backup. The application servers 286 interface with the SQL server 288 with SQL calls or the like. Load balancer 290 balances interaction between the web servers 282 and the application servers 286. The target application 280 may have custom logic for scaling by adding instances of any of the aforementioned elements. Moreover, there may be a layer of administrative software managing the computer platforms on which the target application 280 executes. This layer may perform backups, system updates, restarts of zombie processes or systems, migration of virtual machines between host computers, redirection to failover systems, and so on.

The lower part of FIG. 5 shows migrated application 292. The migrated version may be modified in numerous ways, discussed later. For example, a load balancing mechanism 294 might be provided by the computing cloud (without visibility to the migrated application 292). The migrated application 292 web servers 296 might HTTP servers removed and rely on the computing cloud to handle HTTP requests. Or, the web servers 296 might be instantiated and managed by the cloud. The cloud might also provide load balancing and scaling for migrated application servers 298. The data tier of the migrated application 292 still uses SQL statements and logic (perhaps modified), but the application data is now stored and served from a cloud-managed database instance 300. The tenant that installs the migrated application 292 into the cloud may still configure the database and specify its requirements, but the database is provided by a database service that provides (and isolates) databases for other tenants in the cloud, generally according to user-provided schema or the like. A migration tool and details of other possible modifications to the application thereby will be described next.

FIG. 6 shows a migration tool 320. The migration tool runs on one or more computers and performs migration analysis on a selected application 322, possibly modifying the selected application 322 and/or outputting information to allow a developer to manually modify the selected application 322. The tool uses a migration library 324 having sets of migration rules 326 for respective clouds. For example, one set of migration rules 326. When a user is using the migration tool 320, a target cloud platform is selected, and a corresponding set of migration rules 326 is used by the migration tool 320 to generate migration output 328. The migration output 328 can be revised source code, patches to be applied to the selected application 322, reports advising code, semantic, or architectural changes, or a combination of such outputs.

FIG. 7 shows a view of the rules or migration library 324. As mentioned, there may be different sets of migration rules for different computing cloud platforms. An example rule set 326A might include code rules 350, operating system rules 352, semantic rules 354, SQL or database rules 356, installer rules 358, and/or others.

The code rules 350 might include rules of the form: <condition><action>. A condition may specify a code statement's syntax, a specific library that should be included or excluded, a specific storage type or location, a path, and so forth. Common code patterns might also be specified. Actions can vary. Some actions may modify code or insert a pre-defined comment. Other actions may add output to a migration report log. The code rules 350 might recognize a set of specific calls or methods and convert them to a cloud-specific application programming interface (API). A rule might recognize a call to a specific license server or license library. A rule might also recognize code that is directed to a network service (e.g., Active Directory™) that is not available in the target computing cloud. Corresponding corrective actions; reports and/or revisions, may be include.

A set of operating system configuration rules 352 may be provided for environments where the target application is built for a specific operating system (after migration, in the form of a VM guest in the cloud). In some cases, the operating system rules might relate to application code that interfaces with the operating system. In cases where the computing cloud allows the tenant to specify or install a particular operating system, the rules might directly inspect the operating system. For example, if the relevant computing cloud automatically handles guest operating system updates, guest operating systems should be configured to disable automatic updates. Permissions or special user accounts may be modified or added. Some clouds may support only specific operating system versions (release versions, 32 versus 64 bit versions, etc.), so the rules might identify an operating system need and actions might involve changing the operating system, upgrading the operating system, or flagging a need to do so. In some clouds, it might be advisable, for consistency, to set operating system time zone settings to a particular time zone setting, for instance Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), because application instances or VMs might be running across multiple geographic time zones. Again, corresponding corrections or patches may be included with the rules.

Semantic rules 354 may specify architectural or design aspects of the target application. For example, as noted above, some application features may become obsolete in a computing cloud. Semantic rules 354 might specify clues to recognize load balancers, scaling logic, data backup or mirroring, and others. Clues can come from a build manifest, keyword recognition, or known telltales of off-the-shelf or open-source components. Clues can also come from automated code analysis, which may involve compiling code and analyzing or profiling traits of the code. Semantic properties to recognize might include restart logic (to be handled by the cloud), resource usage, and failover logic. In some clouds, because VMs may be moved (stopped and restarted) at will by the cloud, the rules may recognize parts of an application that rely on local storage, recommending the use of a cloud-based persistent storage in order to reliably maintain state of the application. In one embodiment, a rule may recognize that state stored by one instance of an application component must be recognized by new instances started automatically by the cloud. Other semantic rules might add (or suggest adding) hooks to recognize when a host operating system has entered a sleep or paused state (or restarted), in order to allow an instance of the application to confirm, for instance upon resumption of its host VM, that it has state that is consistent with its state prior to the interruption.

Storage or database rules 356 may involve rules related to shifting from an ordinary database server to a cloud-based database server, which might be an instance of a database service that is part of the computing cloud. These rules might also involve shifting from a particular database to another form of storage such as blob storage in the cloud, key-value storage in the cloud, simple data tables from a table service, etc. In general, as mentioned above, there may be rules that attempt to shift storage strategy of the application from storage on the VM hosting the application to cloud-based storage. Other database rules 356 may look for particular SQL calls, database mirroring logic. A connection rule may be included to cause more frequent connection checking during database transactions. For example, some cloud-based database services may frequently spin up new instances and shut down old instances of an application's database; the original application may assume that a connection remains available through a span of code, whereas connection checking is helpful when migrated to the cloud. In another embodiment, cloud-based databases might not guarantee transactions across multiple tables; a rule might flag SQL transactions that involve multiple tables. Unsupported or unneeded SQL calls might also be recognized.

Installer rules 358 might inspect an install package format of the target application and apply rules related to installing on the target cloud. For instance, if the computing cloud exercises control over VMs hosting the application, various install components might need to be relocated, components (for instance, assemblies or libraries) that the original application assumes to be present might in fact need to be included in the migrated application's installation process. Settings of some application components might need to be altered when being installed in a cloud-based environment. In one embodiment, an entire install package might be flagged as incompatible with the cloud. In another embodiment, an install rule might convert an install package of the application from one format to a format compatible with the target cloud. A rule may also add credentials needed access the cloud in order to install the application. Again, corresponding actions, corrective and/or advisory, may be included with the rules.

Other types of rules may also be included. In one embodiment, the migration library may include cost information about the relevant clouds. Such information might describe how costs accrue in the cloud and the costs for various units of cloud resources. The rules in turn may access the cost information to perform analysis about potential costs of the application in the target cloud. Such analysis might involve. In one embodiment, the cost information may include information about licensing rights or opportunities in the target cloud. These rules, when applied, might add to a migration report a recommendation to seek new licensing arrangements for components (for instance, guest operating systems, database instances, etc.) of the application, or license offers from the cloud's operator (or other vendors) that would cover license requirements and therefore avoid need to separately pay for a license.

The numerous rules mentioned above are not limiting; other specific rules and other categories of rules may be used. Moreover, a rule is simply a convenient form of representing information about needs and preferences in a computing cloud. The term “rule” as used herein, is defined to include any information that describes an original condition of an arbitrary application (is applicable to arbitrary applications) or its environment and a corresponding aspect of a specific computing cloud that is relevant if the application is to be executed in the computing cloud. As used herein, a “rule” also is defined to include any action that might be taken when a condition specified by the rule is determined to be present in the target application, including actual modifications, generation of patches or reports, or other information that can be used. Therefore, in practice, rules may take many forms, including statements in a declarative or logic language, ordinary procedural code including scripting language, compiled code, and so forth. The types and nature of rules may vary from one rule set 326 to the next, depending on the specific computing clouds that correspond to the rule sets. In one embodiment, there is only one rule set 326; the migration library 324 is for only one implementation of a computing cloud. In yet another embodiment, the rules are implemented as part of the executable tool.

FIG. 8 shows a process performed by migration tool 320. At step 380, a user of the migration tool 320 specifies the target software or application to be migrated to a computing cloud (the tool and rules are designed to be applicable to any application). At step 382, the migration tool 320 accesses the target application. This may involve opening a package format, reading source code files and configuration files, mounting a VM image, or other means for looking into the application. The migration tool 320 may identify relations between elements, dependencies, relevant files (e.g., manifests and build scripts), and so forth. At step 384 the relevant rule set is loaded from the rules library. At step 386 the various components of the application of parsed and the relevant rules are applied. At step 388, output is generated. The output may take the various forms mentioned above, including patches, code fixes, recommendations, or others.

FIG. 9 shows an example set of reading tools 400 used by the migration tool 320. To access the contents of an application, the migration tool 320 might use a VM image mounter 402, code parsers 404, install package inspectors 406, assembly readers 408, schema readers 410, script readers 412 or parsers, compilers, software development environments, and/or any other known techniques that are relevant to the type of application being migrated. The VM image mounter 402 might be configured to read a VM image format and mount the image onto a filesystem.

CONCLUSION

Embodiments and features discussed above can be realized in the form of information stored in volatile or non-volatile computer or device readable media. This is deemed to include at least media such as optical storage (e.g., compact-disk read-only memory (CD-ROM)), magnetic media, flash read-only memory (ROM), or any current or future means of storing digital information. The stored information can be in the form of machine executable instructions (e.g., compiled executable binary code), source code, bytecode, or any other information that can be used to enable or configure computing devices to perform the various embodiments discussed above. This is also deemed to include at least volatile memory such as random-access memory (RAM) and/or virtual memory storing information such as central processing unit (CPU) instructions during execution of a program carrying out an embodiment, as well as non-volatile media storing information that allows a program or executable to be loaded and executed. The embodiments and features can be performed on any type of computing device, including portable devices, workstations, servers, mobile wireless devices, and so on. 

1. A method of migrating applications to an application hosting cloud that hosts arbitrary applications for access by clients over the Internet, the method comprising: selecting a target application to migrate to the application hosting cloud; passing the target application to a migration tool; parsing and analyzing the target application with the migration tool to identify migration rules that are applicable to the target application; and applying the identified migration rules to the target application to modify the target application for execution in the application hosting cloud.
 2. A method according to claim 1, wherein the applying the identified migration rules also generates a report identifying proposed modifications to the target application for execution in the application hosting cloud.
 3. A method according to claim 1, wherein the tool comprises a rules library with pluralities of migration rules, each plurality of migration rules corresponding to a different application hosting cloud, and wherein the method further comprises selecting one of the pluralities of migration rules such that the identified migration rules are selected only from among the selected plurality of migration rules.
 4. A method according to claim 1, wherein the application hosting cloud performs constant load balancing for the arbitrary applications hosted therein by instantiating and terminating instances of the arbitrary applications, and wherein an identified rule comprises a condition comprising a semantic behavior related to the load balancing.
 5. A method according to claim 4, wherein the target application comprises an install package and the parsing and analyzing comprises opening the install package identifying configuration settings of the target application, and one of the identified rules modifies a configuration setting.
 6. A method according to claim 1, wherein one of the identified rules comprises description of SQL (structure queried language) code and a code modification, wherein the applying the identified migration rules includes applying the one of the identified rules to change a portion of code of the target application that matches the description, the code prior to being changed being unable to execute correctly in the application hosting cloud.
 7. A method according to claim 1, wherein the identified rules comprise rules related to data persisting in the application hosting cloud and rules related to semantic behavior in the cloud.
 8. A method according to claim 7, wherein the applying the identified rules identifies parts of the target application that perform functionally that is handled by the application hosting cloud.
 9. One or more computer-readable storage media storing information a migration tool executable by a computer, the migration tool comprising: a rules library comprised of migration rules describing semantic, and configuration or code properties that can be applied against arbitrary applications to be migrated to a platform-as-as-service (PaaS) cloud; one or more parsers that parses code and configuration files of a target web application comprised of a front-end application and a back-end data storage application programmed to cooperate with the front-end application, the parser identifying rules that are applicable to the web application; and applying the rules to the web application to identify changes to be made to the web application to allow it to execute in the PaaS cloud.
 10. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein some of the rules describe SQL calls or statements, and the applying comprises modifying the code of the target web application such that the modified calls or statements are able to execute in the PaaS cloud.
 11. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 10, wherein the modified calls or statements, when executed, invoke a database service in the PaaS cloud, the database service comprising part of the PaaS cloud available for arbitrary applications executing in the PaaS cloud, the database service providing respectively isolated and scalable database instances for the arbitrary applications.
 12. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein one or more of the rules, when applied to the target web application, identifies storage logic of the target web application that specifies storage on a local file system and either revises the logic to instead use a persistent data storage service of the PaaS cloud or outputs information identifying the logic and recommending the persistent data storage.
 13. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein the target web application is stored in a virtual machine image and the migration tool mounts the virtual machine image and the one or more parsers parse target web application to apply the rules.
 14. One or more computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein the target web application comprises a database schema and is stored in a deployment package conforming to a standard deployment package format, the migration tool having a component that reads the standard deployment package format.
 15. A method of migrating an application to a cloud, the method comprising: accessing a set of migration rules specific to the cloud, the migration rules identifying properties applications should have when hosted in the cloud and corresponding corrections to the applications; applying the set of migration rules to an application configured to execute on hardware platforms not in the cloud, the applying generating modifications and/or recommendations for modifying the application to execute in the cloud; and using the modifications and/or recommendations to modify the application to execute in the cloud.
 16. A method according to claim 15, wherein the rules identify logic in the application that can be converted from using a native platform resource to using a resource provided by the cloud.
 17. A method according to claim 16, wherein the resource comprises a load balancing resource, a database service resource, a data storage service, or a scaling resource.
 18. A method according to claim 15, wherein the application comprises at least in part a web front-end and the modifications and/or recommendations relate to how client state is maintained by the web front-end.
 19. A method according to claim 15, the method further comprising identifying SQL logic or code and applying corresponding rules of a database service provided to arbitrary applications in the cloud, the database service managing database instances for the arbitrary applications.
 20. A method according to claim 15, wherein the set of rules comprises rules related to data persisting in the application hosting cloud and rules related to semantic behavior in the cloud 